The Enlightened (Mind Dimensions #3)
Dima Zales
Chapter 1
“I can’t believe how much life sucks without the Quiet. The last two weeks have been a total nightmare,” I say to Mira as I put a final layer of sunblock on her long, perfect legs. The warm Florida sun is shining on my back, its relaxing effect mingling with the pleasant buzz from my pi?a colada.
“Yes, horrible.” She snorts lazily. “We Russians had it wrong by sending all those people to Siberia as punishment. We should’ve sent them to South Beach instead.”
I look around at the blue ocean and the beautiful girls, the hottest among them sitting right next to me. Maybe she’s right to be sarcastic. Maybe things aren’t so bad after all.
“You know what I mean. Your company and the locale are what make it bearable,” I say, the details of all our wining, dining, chilling at the beach, and, most notably, our sleeping together—daily—flashing before my eyes. “But I just don’t like the feeling that I’m not in control of my destiny.”
“You want illusions, is that it? You’re old enough to know we’re never in control of anything,” she says, raising the sunglasses off her nose. “Your best bet is to enjoy things when life brings you something good, and tough it out as best you can when it brings you the usual shit storm.”
I know better than to argue against her bleak philosophy. We’ve had a version of this conversation before. If I keep it up, she’ll remind me that most Readers spend the majority of their time unable to phase into the Quiet due to their shallow Depth, and that most people can’t do it at all. She might then call me ungrateful and/or spoiled. Of course, keeping quiet doesn’t mean I agree with her. Even as a kid, when Sara used the ‘there are people starving somewhere’ argument to make me feel guilty, it would never work.
So instead of doing the same dance, I try to strategically change the subject. “Are you hungry? I’ll walk over to the bar and get us something.”
“Sure,” she says in a warmer tone. She’s gracefully accepting my defeat. “Get me one of those cheese quesadillas. I’ll be in the water when you come back.”
I watch her walk down the beach, toward the ocean. The sight of Mira in a tiny bikini lifts my mood.
Okay, so maybe I’ve exaggerated my situation. Our efforts to spend all the cash that Jacob had in his briefcase—the briefcase that Mira had the presence of mind to appropriate while escaping a gunfight—had been pretty fun. That is, until I made a whopping two mil on the bank stock I shorted thanks to my fortuitous Read of Jason Spades, the bank’s CEO. What I saw in his mind that time in the gym played out even better than I’d expected; the government actually had to bail the bank out, and the stock hit rock bottom, enabling me to cash in on my trades. The downside of being a multimillionaire, though, is that it takes some fun out of our frivolous spending—or at least, it does for me.
Once Mira is out of sight, I get up, brush the sand off my legs, and head for the Tiki bar. As I approach the bar, I’m reminded of another mitigating factor for these hellish weeks: my best friend Bert and my aunt Hillary are sitting at the bar, together, sipping fruity umbrella drinks. Bert arrived in town four days ago, while Hillary flew in at the end of last week.
“No, I’m not talking about black holes,” Bert is telling her. “This Singularity is a point in history when the speed of technological advancements will go through the roof. It might be brought on by artificial intelligence or trans-humans—people who merge with technology. The AI, or the enhanced humans, will quickly learn how to build a more intelligent next generation, and that generation will do the same, and the generation after that, which will create a chain reaction of sorts. It’ll be an intelligence explosion, beyond which we can’t predict what will happen. And this is where it’s a little bit like the singularity of physics.”
“And these alleged technological Luddites are trying to prevent this Armageddon scenario?” Hillary asks, apparently fascinated.
“Yes. Except it’s only an Armageddon scenario in their shortsighted worldview. In mine, if you were so determined to use a term from Scripture to describe it, the singularity is more like the Rapture—a hugely positive event where all the world’s problems, such as death, might get resolved. But yes, that’s what I think they’re trying to prevent. That and any change in general.”
“Hello,” I say, interrupting Bert’s favorite conspiracy theory.
“Oh, Darren.” Hillary grins at me. “Bert was just telling me this really fascinating story.”
She actually means it, which reminds me why Bert will be in my debt for the rest of his life. When they both arrived in Miami, I introduced them without any matchmaking ideas in mind. I was thinking that my aunt and my best friend should know each other. It would’ve never occurred to me, not in a million years, that Hillary would actually like Bert. The reverse is not a surprise; my aunt is very cute, in the way that all small things are cute, like puppies and kittens. Then again, her size might be what gave Bert the boldness to approach her in that way; she’s that super-rare girl who looks small next to him. Bert’s so-called courting of Hillary has been a huge source of entertainment during these dark times. That she said yes to dating him is an event as close to a miracle as I’ll ever witness, and thus the debt. I am totally taking credit for this. He asked to be hooked up with a girl, and I started a chain of events that ended with Bert getting the woman of his dreams—cause and (accidental) effect.